Apparatus to create animations is required for many applications such as enabling children to create, record and play back their own stories; for designers to create story boards rapidly; for capturing ideas for feature films; and to enable adults to capture narrated stories about life events. For example, there is a huge potential for new educational and learning tools for children which enable them to create their own animations and/or tell stories either individually or working as a team.
There is much evidence from pedagogical literature that storytelling and fantasy play is an important part of the development of young children. Fantasy play is important for children's cognitive, linguistic, emotional and social development as well as developing collaboration and peer negotiation skills. Often stories are told by manipulating physical toys as story characters, narrating the story at the same time. However, many of today's computer implemented animation creation systems for children use computer-related technology but do not allow children to create animations using their imaginations and develop ideas in a child centred way, or in ways which encourage collaboration amongst children.
Some previous animation creation systems are known which let a user create digital stories with virtual characters and environments using a standard computer. The storyteller has some freedom in the creation of characters and storylines but children and other novice users need to be able to operate a standard computer. In addition, they must create all content on the computer from scratch and therefore cannot leverage the richness already existing in physical objects and environments.
Other systems track physical toys augmented with sensors and can record the movements of the toys as well as narrations to create a story. Systems are available that let the storyteller attach a video camera to different toys and create first person view scenarios augmented by voice narration. These types of systems are reliant on existing physical toys and this can limit the imagination and creative potential of the children or other users. Also, it is often difficult for children to attach cameras to existing physical toys. In addition, the resulting images are often difficult for children to interpret as they may not be taken from a view point that is understood or recognised by the child. Still further systems rely on physical proxy objects representing information added to a scenario. Using physical proxy objects in this way also limits the amount of creativity allowed and requires the child or other user to learn how to use and understand the effects of the proxy object.
Previous systems have had no or limited ability to enable users to work collaboratively in the creation of animations. This is particularly the case in systems designed for use by children who typically all want to join in to capture images and create animations perhaps by taking on the roles of different characters in a narrative. Some systems have used physical proxy objects to enable collaborative animation creation but this requires use of such proxy objects which is not always intuitive or straightforward for end users and can hinder collaboration where multiple children wish to use the same proxy object. In addition the physical proxy objects are limited in their functionality.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known animation creation systems.